In this performance the actor, the sound, the lighting and pyrotechnic effects work as partners and co-authors of what happens on stage. Fire flashes and fragments from notebooks of great thinkers illustrate the inner life of a scientist, his manner of irradiations, his moments of despair. Director and composer Heiner Goebbels abandons traditional drama for a world in which mechanisms, fire and electricity, sounds and melodies tell us their stories in the same way that a human might – thus becoming tools for creating polyphony.

The first version of this performance was created in French at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1998.

Warning: One of the characters, the smell of sulfur, might aggravate allergies.

The performance is accompanied by English-language supertitles.

Heiner Goebbels: “I think Max Black is my most ‘electrical’ piece because it is the story of doing research in a laboratory. No matter what experiment he may do, all the sounds accompanying him are recorded live, played back and transformed. In the course of his research he creates his own soundtrack which, in its turn, creates the choreography and rhythm of his movements.”